AUT INVENIAM VIAM AUT FACIAM

Word of the Day: Oligopoly!

Below is info I ripped off Wikipedia. Because it’s time to get lazy. …In truth, I have no idea why I post original content when I could simply repost already-existing content that has proven to be popular. Why foolishly strain my electrochemical thought machine when I could get popular by posting posts that are already popular?

Because, friends, InterType isn’t a goddam traffic cop!

Most days…

MAKE WITH THE HYPOCRISY ALREADY! Sure thing: If you don’t know what an oligopoly is (I learned the meaning through the context in which I read it, myself), see if this direct copy-paste from Wiki gets you close to the definition. In the US:

Six movie studios receive 90% of American film revenues.

The television and high speed internet industry is mostly an oligopoly of seven companies: The Walt Disney Corporation, CBS Corporation, Viacom, Comcast, Hearst Corporation, Time Warner, and News Corporation.

Four wireless providers (AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel) control 89% of the cellular telephone service market. This is not to be confused with cellular telephone manufacturing, an integral portion of the cellular telephone market as a whole.

Healthcare insurance in the United States consists of very few insurance companies controlling major market share in most states. For example, California’s insured population of 20 million is the most competitive in the nation and 44% of that market is dominated by two insurance companies, Anthem and Kaiser Permanente.

Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors control about 80% of the beer industry

…I couldn’t resist — I cleaned up the above a bitto make it easy on the eyes and brain-machine.

Three leading food processing companies, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo and Nestle, together achieve a large proportion[vague] of global processed food sales. These three companies are often used as an example of “Rule of three“,[37] which states that markets often become an oligopoly of three large firms.

[RANT GOES HERE. SPECIAL “FUCK-YOUS” TO THE FTC, GOP (always and forever you jowl-jiggling pederasts!), REAGAN, OTHER USUAL TOPICS OF DERISION, AND REAGAN AGAIN.]

In conclusion: When I am king, you will be first against the wall.*

PS: Other advantages? Social mobility! Which is quite a lot of bullshit, especially when it comes to America’s special flavor: The American Dream. Supposedly anyone can become anything in the US, and only in the US. But the fact is this Dream comes true a lot more fucking often in other countries. So why do we have this stupid-ass dream? It helps us accept a much higher degree of income inequality than is tolerated in other countries because we think eventually we can/could/will be rich as hell.

Nope.

Stats: Half of kids who are raised middle-class will improve their lot, half will do worse. If you’re born into the poorest twenty percent, there’s a forty percent chance you’ll stay there. (If it makes you feel better, it’s equally difficult for the richest twenty percent to escape their class, too.)

I think the above stats are way too goddam conservative. Why? Because three-fourths of Americans are paid exactly what they were thirty years ago (Reagan!). So anyone whose family is in this majority is likely to join the majority and, therefore, earn exactly what their folks did. Ish.

Upward mobility has always been modest at best, and the American Dream has always been as likely to to happen as winning the lottery. …Which makes me wonder if it has ever come true at all…

Yes, and all these wonderful ideas are first hatched as ways to fucking kill people. WWII made the world its most productive.

Chemicals that become used for purposes other than killing people almost surely are the result of people trying to find a new way to kill people. …Speech recognition software? Developed by Darpa, which super-specializes in the art of killing people. Plus every goddam thing else: Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you a better consumer.